Justin
Lo
I
poked my long bangs, frowning. All the
other girls had such glorious hairstyles, and mine just hung down like the
leaves off a willow branch.
It
was my birthday, but no one was home yet.
My parents always came home at six, but today, the waiting seemed
interminable. And not that fun type of
interminable where you desperately try to squeeze in as much playtime or phone
time before your parents come home and make you stop. It was that boring type of interminable – just plain
insufferable. Just long. Like my bangs.
I
tried sleeping, but my heart was too anxious for the birthday celebration to
let me relax. So, I decided to sneak
into my parents’ closet to see if I could find out what gifts they’d gotten me. Even though I knew no one was home, I was
still overcome with a sensation of fear and guilt. I mused that Rodion was right after all – all planning and
intelligence went to nought during the moments of commmitting a crime. I knocked down ties and towels all over the
place, and when I attempted to replace them, I only created a greater
mess. Indeed, I had not discovered a
single gift but I had messed up the closet quite terribly. It was very embarrassing.
All
for the best, I figured, since it’d give something to make the time pass more
quickly. I gave up on finding the gifts
and instead devoted my time to picking up the scattered objects and
meticulously replace them so that even a person comparing a photograph of the
room at the beginning of the day to the closet now would have trouble
differentiating the two. When I picked
up the final article of clothing, a forest green jacket, I spotted, beneath it,
a small box.
It
contained a doll, not much different than other dolls I’d seen or played with
before. She had one of those pretty
figures that some girls adored and some girls denounced, but no one could say
was particularly bad. Her dress was
brand new and so clean, a sterile white as seen in hospitals. In fact, everything about her was pristine
and pure except a spot of blue paint that had somehow found its way onto her
lower right arm.
I
picked up the box, not knowing what to make of it. It certainly wasn’t wrapped, and who’d give a thirteen-year-old
girl a doll, anyhow? But it was very
fascinating, and I just sat there, holding the box in my hands. It would be so nice to have a friend as
loyal and close and understanding as a doll.
Lindsay was my only friend, and even she wasn’t very close – after all,
I didn’t see the other eighth graders anywhere but at school. I was always busy doing other things or
working on this or that every evening.
I was really afraid Lindsay would just give up one day and stop inviting
me to go to movies or sleepovers with her.
I was really afraid.
I
briefly reminisced on Meredith, my best friend in fifth grade, but I couldn’t
even remember what she looked like anymore.
I ceased to interest her once she joined the basketball team and found
the bright energy of her teammates to be all the friendship she needed; I
obediently drifted away. Suddenly, I
heard a car drive in, so I had no more time to think about the past: I had to
get out of the closet ASAP. I quickly
fled from the crime scene, returning to my room to crack open my Geometry
textbook.
But
when I heard my father’s footsteps scaling the stairs, I realized, to my
horror, that I was still holding the doll’s box. I quickly stashed it below my blankets, crossing my fingers that
he wouldn’t be missing the doll anytime soon.
“Hi,
Dad,” I said, diligently working on my Geometry homework. “Lindsay wanted to know if I could sleep
over her house this Saturday.”
“Oh?”
replied Dad. “Well, you should tell her
if you can or cannot, then.”
“Dad!”
I shouted, laughing. “I’m asking you if
I can!”
Dad
gave a belly chuckle, the lenses of his large square glasses moving up and down
with his face, causing the gleaming spots to move up and down.
“You
should ask Mom,” he concluded. Then, he
went back downstairs.
Sighing,
I worked on my homework until dinnertime came.
Halfway through dinner, I asked Mom if I could go over Lindsay’s house,
but she said no. We had to go see my
piano teacher give a recital that evening, so it wouldn’t make any sense to go
over Lindsay’s house only to sleep.
“Okay,”
I said with resignation.
“Don’t
worry,” she said. “You can have your
cake now! Let’s celebrate your
thirteenth birthday!”
Lindsay
would definitely never ask again. I was
a bad luck friend.
My
mother brought out the beautiful cake adorned with thirteen candles, arranged
in a circle. She lit the candles and
cut the lights, creating a spectacular effect, the orange flickerings so
mesmerizing and inciting. Closing my
eyes, I considered my birthday wish.
“I
wish,” I began in my mind. “I wish that
the doll would come to life and be my best friend forever.”
The
candles were all out before I even opened my eyes again. My parents clapped, and I sat down, the
world spinning all around me.
It
was ten o’clock and time to go to bed.
My parents had already retired to bed, and I was in my PJs, sitting in
the dark atop my pillow. I could feel
my eyelids twitching, twitching, then falling like raindrops from a cloud that
could no longer hold it in. I felt my
body collapsing, but I did not resist.
It had been a tiring day, and I’d tried on every new set of clothes I
got for my birthday, experimented with the set of paints, and read the first
act of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
But
something felt odd – the blanket was unusually firm, thick, and warm.
“The
hell?” I muttered, wearily opening my eyelids.
I quietly slid off my bed to flick the lights on. On my bed lay a girl in pajamas that were
just like mine but blue. I really
couldn’t believe it, so I walked towards her.
I thought I saw her flicker once, but my eyes were probably just
adjusting to the sudden influx of light.
“Who
are you?” I asked. It was the most
natural question I could think off. But
the girl was snoring. Very loudly.
I
grabbed her shoulders and gave her a good shake.
“Uhn,”
she said groggily, opening her eyes halfway.
“Let me rest, Kristi.”
I
eyed her suspiciously when I suddenly caught a glimpse of her right arm. On it was a large, conspicuously blue
blotch. Could it be real?
“
Life
had gotten immesurably boring again.
Nicole had been sitting there for ages, doing nothing. She’d admittedly become rather bland over
the past few weeks, but she’d never left my side, and I was grateful for that.